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ROBERT BAKER / staff photo
Dick Lochen stands at the meat counter in his Nicholson store Monday. He said today will probably mark his last big meat-cutting order before his retirement.

When Dick Lochen was barely out of second grade in 1948, he started bagging up potatoes for his grandfather, who had a grocery store in Nicholson.

Lochen's Market was launched in 1915, the same year the Nicholson Bridge was opened.

And for two-thirds of the intervening years, Mr. Lochen, who turns 72 today, said Monday it was hard to imagine his not being involved in some aspect of Nicholson's groceries.

But, this Sunday at 1 p.m., he will lock the door for the last time, and leave Nicholson without a full-service grocery store.

Dollar General came to town three years ago and can offer some food and pantry items, but people who "really" want to buy groceries, Mr. Lochen said, will likely now have to go to Factoryville or Tunkhannock.

It was all started 97 years ago, when his grandfather, George Lochen, opened a meat market on Main Street.

"He and my grandmother lived above the store in an apartment and raised a family committed to this town," Mr. Lochen said.

Mr. Lochen said his grandfather taught him how to cut meat when he was just 12, but he remembers a few years prior to that during World War II riding with his grandfather to the Gelat Slaughterhouse where they would pick up sides of meat in an old panel truck.

After the war, Lochen's continued to be known for its meat and Nicholson was then supporting four grocery stores including an A&P, Acme and another independent, he said.

Through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Mr. Lochen and his son Richard estimated Monday the amount of meat butchered would be in the tons each week.

But Richard Lochen, an accountant with his own thriving CPA practice in Tunkhannock and Nicholson, said, "People's habits began changing drastically."

The last railroad passenger service over the Nicholson Bridge took place in 1966, a far cry from the era when 10 or more trains would come through Nicholson each day.

And, in the last generation, people have abandoned dairy farming.

"The kind of customer loyalty we had always known was diminished from the good old days," Richard Lochen said.

Dick Lochen noted, however, that despite never being able to take a vacation, "I enjoyed every minute of it. We have had some of the most wonderful employees and customers out there and it was a joy to see their faces each time they entered the front door and be able to find something for them if they needed it."

Long-term employee Dawn Bell, who started clerking 35 years ago and has done most grocery store jobs imaginable, said, "Customer service has always been a hallmark for Mr. Lochen."

"I am heartbroken about the closing," Ms. Bell said Monday night. "This has been like a wonderful family. People have no idea how much he has done when people needed it, and he never asked for anything in return."

Contact the writer: bbaker@wcexaminer.com

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